Is there such a thing as too much good fats?

[Northstar]

I love (good) fatty foods like nuts/seeds, nut butters, avocados, etc... and can eat a ton of them. I also realize the potential of these foods to make you gain weight, which is something I need. So I am just wondering if there is such a thing as too much with the good fats?

[Fallen_Horse]

Unless an extreme percentage of your calories are from fats, then I wouldn't worry. Get mono fats and a good omega3:omega6 ratio, keep fat below maybe 40% of your cals? and you should be good to go....

[vegimator]

Jack Norris had a post about this recently. http://jacknorrisrd.com/?p=1084

 

"William Harris, MD, a vegan of 40 years, recently told me about his experiences with taking omega-3s, both ALA and DHA. He said that after taking ALA by way of ground up flaxseeds, 1-2 tsp per day for about 5 years, he started to bruise very easily, and on one occasion in December 2000 the bursa over his left knee spontaneously filled with blood without any previous injury. Thinking this might be due to excess synthesis of EPA from the ALA in the flax, he searched the literature and was able to find one supporting reference from a plastic surgeon, who was advising his face lift patients to stop the flax seed prior to facial surgery.

 

Harris decided to stop taking flax seeds and the easy bruising went away after 4 weeks. Four years later, after reading about DHA shortage in vegans, he started taking DHA supplements. After taking them for only 4 weeks, the bruising returned. He stopped taking the DHA and the bruising, once again, ceased."

[Northstar]

So the conclusion of that story is vegans are not short DHA? Or what?

[vegimator]

The takeaway seems to be that if you have very low omega 6 consumption and enough ALA from vegetables like Harris, your body might be converting ala to epa/dha well enough that it doesn't need supplementation. It seems risky to assume that to be the case though. Norris' recommendation is to keep taking flax and/or dha supplements unless you start getting weird bruises.

[Northstar]

I have never heard before that all vegans need to supplement for omegas.

I do not supplement and only eat flax every once in a while, will a blood test show if your deficient?

[xjohanx]

Yes there is such a thing as too much "good" fats. Oxidative stress, decreased insulin sensitivity, increased expression of endothelial adhesion molecules just to name a few. And regarding what fallen_horse said, a lot of these negative effects is seen with intakes below 40E% from fat. E% isn't very fair here either because it seems to be more of an absolute, and not relative, dose dependet issue in some cases.

I think mono fats aren't the worst thing in ones diet but I wouldn't recommend a very high consumption of it. Besides how are you gonna get 40E% from fat, mostly monos and keep a good ratio of n3:n6? It would take a lot of flax to make that work.